Two weeks home, and I’m only just beginning to digest Joe’s and my mission trip to Israel, guided by Partnership2Gether.

Normally, I’d write up a whole travelogue in a single post. List places, facts, figures. Show off the amazing time we had.

But we didn’t go to Israel for that reason.

We went because after the Hamas pogrom of October 7, 2023, I felt the call of my people Israel. See our devastation. Hear our stories. Bear witness to injustice. They are now “my people” – not just inhabitants of a country halfway around the globe.

So this was a solidarity mission. We journeyed from the Kotel in the Old City of Jerusalem to cutting-edge innovation at the Peres Center in Tel Aviv.

From learning about the Holocaust at Yad Vashem to current Israeli politics at the Knesset – where, the day we were there, they were having a heated debate about setting up a commission of inquiry into October 7th.

From the South to Kibbutz Nir Oz near the Gaza border and to the North to Kibbutz Hanita on the Lebanese border.

I learned so much about the ongoing human cost of October 7th. Talking to the wives and mothers of reservists. How do you put food on the table then your partner has been deployed for over 240 of the last 480 days? And whose jobs may be in jeopardy. How do you create stability for your children when you’ve been an evacuee in a hotel room for the past 9 months? And who cares for the caregivers?

Joe was inspired by the resilience and enthusiasm of the young people he met. The teens in participating in the Be’tzavta Jewish identity workshops. Soldiers at the Golani Brigade Training Base. The 15-year-old daughter of our Shabbat dinner hosts.

It’s a challenging way to travel, that daily “forced march” (more on that later). I can’t say there’s anything I would have left out of our itinerary. It was such a thorough showcase of Israeli geography, time, events, culture, Partnership program participants and ages.

And always, October 7th, the hostages, and the ripple effects of this trauma on Israeli society were right on our shoulders. See us. Hear us. Talk to us. Profound darkness. Rays of light.

Like any Bar Mitzvah buffet where you have to taste just a little bit of everything – for science, as my mother would say — you end up with way too much on your plate, overstuffed, and exhausted from all the eating. But you don’t want to miss a thing.

So … amazing? No. Not the word I would use. Intense? Yes.

Intense sorrow. Intense pain. Intense love. Intense hope. Life, in all its intensity.

And for that, I am grateful.

Exhausted, but grateful.

February 11, 2025